EMPOWER PEOPLE Blog

RANCHI: The state welfare department with the help of Association Against Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation of Children (ATSEC) rescued 26 minor girls from different localities of New Delhi. The rescued girls were brought to the city on Monday by ATSEC volunteers.

With this, the total number of rescued girls from New Delhi and neighbouring places in the last eight months has reached 94. Admitting that trafficking of girls from Jharkhand has become a major concern for the state government social welfare minister, Bimla Pradhan, said to put an end to this as they have now started providing vocational training to the rescued girls. The department has rescued 94 children, including 13 boys, who were trafficked to New Delhi, and most of them have been handed over to their parents.

In case, the department is not able to trace their parents then the girls are kept in shelter homes which are supported by the department. There they are provided free education and vocational training. "We are slowly moving in positive direction and expect that in the years to come, no girl will be required to move out of Jharkhand in search of job. Every rescued girl will get a job after they are trained," said Pradhan.

Sources in the social welfare department contradicted the claims of the minister to check trafficking with a few years. "Most of the NGOs, including ATSEC and Bharatiya Kisan Sangh, which is working to rescue the girls from Delhi are not getting financial support from the state government. We cannot expect these NGOs to work with sincerity without financial support from the government and if non-payment continues they are not going to work sincerely and problem of trafficking will not end," said a source.

The minister, however, tried to play down the matter. "We had stopped giving money to NGOs to verify their credential and claims. If the funds of ATSEC and Bharatiya Kisan Sangh have been stopped then I will check it and ensure that they get it at the earliest," said the minister. Source

Finally, the community comes together to stand up against the Bride trafficking. Today there are about 500 community groups having more than 5,000 such community members. The high way of in- country trafficking especially for bride trafficking starts from Assam and West Bengal and goes down to the capital of the country. The mobilisation of the community is very encouraging outcome of the 16 day march started on 1^st March 2012. The March had covered 4,400 odd km travelling through 21 districts of the two states.

Some facts, case studies and videos related to Bride trafficking were shared shared in the street meetings during the march. When these facts were shared in the street meetings during the march and when they were motivated to take charge of protection of their daughters, people found the right forum to come together. At times mothers of victim or two broke down in public as their daughters are still missing. They are sold by the known persons as brides far away from home.

Religious leader also came forward. They actively participated in the motor bike rally. Imams discussed the plight of victims in their meeting in the mosques. The social issues being discussed by religious leaders will go a long way in combating bride trafficking. Some 50 meetings and two Anti-trafficking conventions with Muslim religious leaders were held. These meeting ended with the promise that the discussion over the issue on Friday khutba will be continued with inputs from EMPOWER PEOPLE on situation it will be taken up once a month.

Similarly, Arya Smaj also has shown keen interest in taking up activities related to this social movement against bride trafficking. They have planned to start a campaign in their area with help of EMPOWER PEOPLE.

Wall writing in Bangla language during March

The support of the Community Based Organisation (CBOs) and NGOs was exceptionally good. They provided all the support for logistics to conduct the meetings and also brought in the local reality which has lead to increased number of cases of trafficking for marriage. The common men, young and old were equally involved in the march. Children and women also have extended their support seeing it as their own cause.

Plan of March :Assam to Delhi” and concept of “people’s network against trafficking” which is named as “civic anti trafficking unit” was actually result of the feedback from the concerned groups and targeted communities.

The Social movement against trafficking has began.

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By Nita Bhalla

Thu Oct 27, 2011 10:03am BST

BAGHPAT, India, Oct 27 (TrustLaw) - When Munni arrived in this fertile, sugarcane-growing region of north India as a young bride years ago, little did she imagine she would be forced into having sex and bearing children with her husband's two brothers who had failed to find wives.

Phul Kumari, 25, stands with her child in

front of a window in a village community centre

in Baghpat district, located in India's northern state

of Uttar Pradesh October 18, 2011. Kumari

was trafficked to Uttar Pradesh as a bride for

her husband and has been repeatedly

raped by his brothers who could not

find wives

Photo: Reuters

"My husband and his parents said I had to share myself with his brothers," said the woman in her mid-40s, dressed in a yellow sari, sitting in a village community centre in Baghpat district in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.

"They took me whenever they wanted -- day or night. When I resisted, they beat me with anything at hand," said Munni, who had managed to leave her home after three months only on the pretext of visiting a doctor.

"Sometimes they threw me out and made me sleep outside or they poured kerosene over me and burnt me."

Such cases are rarely reported to police because women in these communities are seldom allowed outside the home unaccompanied, and the crimes carry deep stigma for the victims. So there may be many more women like Munni in the mud-hut villages of the area.

Munni, who has three sons from her husband and his brothers, has not filed a police complaint either.

Social workers say decades of aborting female babies in a deeply patriarchal culture has led to a decline in the population of women in some parts of India, like Baghpat, and in turn has resulted in rising incidents of rape, human trafficking and the emergence of "wife-sharing" amongst brothers.

Aid workers say the practice of female foeticide has flourished among several communities across the country because of a traditional preference for sons, who are seen as old-age security.

"We are already seeing the terrible impacts of falling numbers of females in some communities," says Bhagyashri Dengle, executive director of children's charity Plan India.

"We have to take this as a warning sign and we have to do something about it or we'll have a situation where women will constantly be at risk of kidnap, rape and much, much worse."

Munni, who goes by one name, sits in a village community center in Baghpat district, located in India's northern state of Uttar Pradesh October 18, 2011. The mother of three was married into a family of three sons where she was shared amongst her husband and his brothers who could not find wives (Photo: Reuters)

SECRET PRACTICES

Just two hours drive from New Delhi, with its gleaming office towers and swanky malls, where girls clad in jeans ride motor bikes and women occupy senior positions in multi-nationals, the mud-and-brick villages of Baghpat appear a world apart.

Here, women veil themselves in the presence of men, are confined to the compounds of their houses as child bearers and home makers, and are forbidden from venturing out unaccompanied.

Village men farm the lush sugarcane plantations or sit idle on charpoys, or traditional rope beds, under the shade of trees in white cotton tunics, drinking tea, some smoking hookah pipes while lamenting the lack of brides for their sons and brothers.

The figures are telling.

According to India's 2011 census, there are only 858 women to every 1,000 men in Baghpat district, compared to the national sex ratio of 940.

Child sex ratios in Baghpat are even more skewed and on the decline with 837 girls in 2011 compared to 850 in 2001 -- a trend mirrored across districts in northern Indian states such as Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan and Gujarat in the west.

"In every village, there are at least five or six bachelors who can't find a wife. In some, there are up to three or four unmarried men in one family. It's a serious problem," says Shri Chand, 75, a retired police constable.

"Everything is hush, hush. No one openly admits it, but we all know what is going on. Some families buy brides from other parts of the country, while others have one daughter-in-law living with many unwedded brothers."

Women from other regions such as the states of Jharkhand and West Bengal speak of how their poor families were paid sums of as little as 15,000 rupees ($300) by middle-men and brought here to wed into a different culture, language and way of life.

"It was hard at first, there was so much to learn and I didn't understand anything. I thought I was here to play," said Sabita Singh, 25, who was brought from a village in West Bengal at the age of 14 to marry her husband, 19 years her elder.

"I've got used to it," she says holding her third child in her lap. "I miss my freedom."

Such exploitation of women is illegal in India, but many of these crimes are gradually becoming acceptable among such close-knit communities because the victims are afraid to speak out and neighbours unwilling to interfere.

Some villagers say the practice of brothers sharing a wife has benefits, such as the avoidance of division of family land and other assets amongst heirs.

Others add the shortage of women has, in fact, freed some poor families with daughters from demands for substantial dowries by grooms' families.

Social activists say nothing positive can be derived from the increased exploitation of women, recounting cases in the area of young school girls being raped or abducted and auctioned off in public.

Sabita Singh, 25, stands in front of her home with her son in a village in Baghpat district, located in India's northern state of Uttar Pradesh October 18, 2011. From a poor rural community in India's West Bengal state, Sabita was trafficked to Uttar Pradesh as a bride for her husband who is 19 years older. Picture taken October 18, 2011 (Photo: Reuters)

UNABATED ABORTIONS

Despite laws making pre-natal gender tests illegal, India's 2011 census indicated that efforts to curb female foeticide have been futile.

While India's overall female-to-male ratio marginally improved since the last census in 2001, fewer girls were born than boys and the number of girls under six years old plummeted for the fifth decade running.

A May study in the British medical journal Lancet found that up to 12 million Indian girls were aborted over the last three decades -- resulting in a skewed child sex ratio of 914 girls to every 1,000 boys in 2011 compared with 962 in 1981.

Sons, in traditionally male-dominated regions, are viewed as assets -- breadwinners who will take care of the family, continue the family name, and perform the last rites of the parents, an important ritual in many faiths.

Daughters are seen as a liability, for whom families have to pay substantial wedding dowries. Protecting their chastity is a major concern as instances of pre-marital sex are seen to bring shame and dishonour on families.

Women's rights activists say breaking down these deep-rooted, age-old beliefs is a major challenge.

"The real solution is to empower girls and women in every way possible," says Neelam Singh, head of Vatsalya, an Indian NGO working on children's and women's issues.

"We need to provide them with access to education, healthcare and opportunities which will help them make decisions for themselves and stand up to those who seek to abuse or exploit them." (TrustLaw is a global news service on women's rights and good governance run by Thomson Reuters Foundation. For more information see www.trust.org/trustlaw)

(Editing by Sugita Katyal)

Source

NEW DELHI: One of the most wanted human traffickers working on the West Bengal-Orissa-Bihar-Delhi route has been arrested from the Najafgarh area.
Nemai Sardar (33), a resident of West Bengal, pretended to run a domestic servant placement agency in the capital and used to lure girls from West Bengal, Orissa and Bihar by promising them high salaries. "Once in Delhi, these girls were turned into bonded labourers with very little wage. We are probing whether there were physically exploited, too,'' said P S Khuswah, additional DCP (crime).
The crime branch of Delhi Police, along with a CID team of the West Bengal police and the non-government organization Shakti Vahini, carried out a raid on Kalka Mail on Thursday and rescued five girls brought from North 24 Parganas. Raju, Sardar's associate accompanying the girls, gave the police team the slip. However, he left behind some papers that helped the police to zero in on Sardar and arrest him from his hideout in southwest Delhi's Najafgarh on Friday.
The cops also found in the hideout several incriminating documents, including photos of hundreds of girls who have gone missing from West Bengal in the past several years. A hunt is still on to trace more victims and two other human traffickers, Rajesh and Sushma.
According to sources, the accused had allegedly been operating for the past several years. He started functioning from Naraina but shifted base to Najafgarh five years ago to evade detection.
The operation was carried out on the directive of the Calcutta high court following a habeas corpus petition moved by the mother of a girl who had gone missing from South 24 Parganas last year. The girl, who was allegedly smuggled out through a trafficking network of which Sardar was reportedly a part, is yet to be traced. Raids were earlier conducted in Ghaziabad, Gurgaon and Hapur in co-ordination with the local police.
Rishi Kant of the NGO Shakti Vahini said girls were brought to Delhi in batches and by trains originating from Howrah. Many of them were also sold off as brides in Haryana, he said.
During interrogation, Sardar reportedly said that when he entered into the trade in 2000, he would get Rs 2,500 per girl as his commission. "Now he gets Rs 10,000 per girl," Kant said. Sardar also claimed that his agency was registered.
Based on the worldwide data on trafficking, 43% of the victims are forced into commercial sexual exploitation, out of which 98% are women and girls and the majority belongs to the age group of 18 to 24 years.
According to Unicef, India harbours 19% of the world's child population and almost 42% of the total world population. According to the International Labour Organisation, there is a larger child labour force in India than anywhere else in the world. Official Indian statistics put the total number of child workers at 11 million full-time labourers and 10 million part-time ones. Unofficial figures, however, vary between 55 million and 90 million. The Child Labour Act was passed in 1986, which bans children below 14 years from being hired for any labour. TOI

New Delhi: The Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Shri Ghulam Nabi Azad today convened a meeting of Ministers of Health, Health Secretaries and other senior officers from the 18 States where declining child sex ratio has been a matter of concern as apparent from the recent census figures. The 18 states include Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Chandigarh, Gujarat, Delhi, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Uttaranchal, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Bihar and Karnataka.

Opening the meeting Shri Azad said that today’s meeting has important bearings for the future of the nation as the declining child sex ratio in most of the States is a matter of grave national concern. Shri Azad said there is urgent need to arrest the gender imbalance. “Proper implementation of the PC & PNDT Act and deliberation on the steps are required to be taken to address this grave challenge by the States”, he said.

“The 2011 Provisional Census figures have served as a wake-up call for all of us. The misuse of medical technology for pre birth sex selection is evidently increasing” he noted as the number of girls in the age group of 0-6 years now stands at a mere 914 for every 1000 boys. The Minister said all necessary steps; political, social, economic and scientific, need to be taken to end negative discrimination against the girl child. The role that Information, Education and Communication (IEC) can play in building a positive environment for valuing the girl child can hardly be over-emphasized. “Though the PC & PNDT Act is a central legislation, it’s implementation lies entirely with the States who are expected to enforce it through District Appropriate Authorities at the State, District and Sub-district levels”. Shri Azad asked all States to appoint the Appropriate Authorities and also monitor their functioning as also conduct systematic inspections and overall monitoring of doctors and clinics registered under the Act. Shri Azad urged the States to ensure proper utilization of the funding under NRHM for setting up dedicated PNDT cells at the State and district levels to strengthen capacity to enforce the PC & PNDT Act.

The Union Minister also urged the States to implement the Janani Shishu Suraksha Karyakram in true letter and spirit so that the poor, needy and vulnerable sections of our society are brought into the institutional fold and their out of pocket expenses are eliminated.

source

Opening the meeting Shri Azad said that today’s meeting has important bearings for the future of the nation as the declining child sex ratio in most of the States is a matter of grave national concern. Shri Azad said there is urgent need to arrest the gender imbalance. “Proper implementation of the PC & PNDT Act and deliberation on the steps are required to be taken to address this grave challenge by the States”, he said.

“The 2011 Provisional Census figures have served as a wake-up call for all of us. The misuse of medical technology for pre birth sex selection is evidently increasing” he noted as the number of girls in the age group of 0-6 years now stands at a mere 914 for every 1000 boys. The Minister said all necessary steps; political, social, economic and scientific, need to be taken to end negative discrimination against the girl child. The role that Information, Education and Communication (IEC) can play in building a positive environment for valuing the girl child can hardly be over-emphasized. “Though the PC & PNDT Act is a central legislation, it’s implementation lies entirely with the States who are expected to enforce it through District Appropriate Authorities at the State, District and Sub-district levels”. Shri Azad asked all States to appoint the Appropriate Authorities and also monitor their functioning as also conduct systematic inspections and overall monitoring of doctors and clinics registered under the Act. Shri Azad urged the States to ensure proper utilization of the funding under NRHM for setting up dedicated PNDT cells at the State and district levels to strengthen capacity to enforce the PC & PNDT Act.

The Union Minister also urged the States to implement the Janani Shishu Suraksha Karyakram in true letter and spirit so that the poor, needy and vulnerable sections of our society are brought into the institutional fold and their out of pocket expenses are eliminated.

source

If you are reading this page, you are probably interested in starting a new chapter of EMPOWER PEOPLE in your area. We appreciate and welcome your interest in EMPOWER PEOPLE and would like to make it easy for you to be able to start a new chapter. Before this, request you to kindly refer to the all the pages in About Us section of our site. This will give you a complete understanding and activities of EMPOWER PEOPLE. Also, please make sure you are in contact with one of the core members of EMPOWER PEOPLE so that you can get more clarity on our works. Details are mentioned in the EMPOWER PEOPLE Team section.

There are certain minimum requirements that a new chapter needs to satisfy before it can be designated as an EMPOWER PEOPLE chapter: The most up to date requirements are available on the EMPOWER PEOPLE website.

Be sure to identify the goals of the group and then think about activities that will help achieve those goals. One of the main activities of EMPOWER PEOPLE has been an Organizational Development workshop (ODW). We have been doing this from the beginning to help mostly underprivileged children in schools and colleges in various parts of India. We shall share some tips on how to conduct a similar ODW in your chapter.

What is EMPOWER PEOPLE?

EMPOWER PEOPLE is perceived of as pioneer institution in protecting women victims of violence and mitigating post-violence trauma. A grass roots organization, its history is seeped in youth activism.

The main focus of the organization is to work for disadvantaged women regardless of caste, class or religion who are victims or who fear being of violence including domestic violence and Trafficking or other type of slavery, and provide them shelter, proper counseling legal support and any other required.

The Objective of the Organization kicked off in the form of Movement in early 1999 when Shafique visited some villages as a Naxal activist where he saw hunger, horror and lack of willingness of officials and civil society. He found that Party is also not worry to tackle this; he decided to tackle all the menace. At the initial stage the organization Career Development Centre, started imparting education and played key role in spreading education as awareness program among youths. The aim to provide education and food to the poor and marginalized children resulted fruitful.

EMPOWER PEOPLE CHAPTERS

EMPOWER PEOPLE Chapters advance the mission and objectives by promoting volunteerism and welfare work at local level. Participating in welfare programs is a key benefit of your membership and is supported at the chapter level through activities, meetings, and events. We encourage our members to initiate chapters in theirareas to enable networking with fellow members from different walks of life, ina local, face-to-face setting. EMPOWER PEOPLE members are the key drivers of our success –and our chapters are the key vehicle for supporting and engaging our members.

GUIDELINES FOR ESTABLISHING LOCAL CHAPTERS:

01. Any ten or more Members of the Assocation residing in adistinct geographic area may request permission from the EMPOWER PEOPLE Executive Councilto associate themselves into a Local Chapter of EMPOWER PEOPLE. There shall not be more than two Chapters inany one large metropolitan city.

02. The purpose of the chapter shall be to identify and implement strategies to empower the individuals of our society. The chapter shall adopt and implement the stated mission of EMPOWER PEOPLE.

03. It is mandatory that all members of local chapters become members of EMPOWER PEOPLE. The Chapter shall have an executive body comprising of at least a Chapter Head and a Secretary.

04. The chapters in a “region” should establish a mechanism by which they elect amongst themselves a Head of the region in consultation with EMPOWER PEOPLE Executive Council. Two members of Local Chapter shall be the part of Core Group of EMPOWER PEOPLE. The election of this representative should be before or coinciding with the general election of EMPOWER PEOPLE.

05. The Chapters shall manage their own affairs, including finances, completely independent of EMPOWER PEOPLE in a manner chosen by its Executive Body.

06. The Chapters shall make all efforts to facilitate the achievements of the purposes and goals of the Association, particularly the recruitment of new members of EMPOWER PEOPLE.

07. The Chapters shall not carry out or knowingly support any activity that may be, or is likely to be, anti-social, anti nation or detrimental to the interests of EMPOWER PEOPLE

08. All membership dues are to be paid to EMPOWER PEOPLE Headquarter directly. Fifty percent of the dues collected from a first time member of a local chapter will be returned to the local chapter account. Disbursement of these funds to the local chapter should be approved by the President. In addition, the Chapter may have its own dues.

09. The Chapter could open a local bank account. Any donation of chapter members should be deposited with the EMPOWER PEOPLE master account and disbursed by EMPOWER PEOPLE.

10. The Chapter shall report its financial statements and activities to EMPOWER PEOPLE Headquarters on a quarterly basis.

11. The name of the chapter can adopt by local team but place and a sentence “CBO of EMPOWER PEOPLE” shall mentioned bottom of the specific name. like Sajrephool Punjab CBO of EMPOWER PEOPLE or wama-vahini Mewat CBO of EMPOWER PEOPLE.

You can also use EMPOWER PEOPLE like this ‘EMPOWER PEOPLE -xxx’ ,where xxx represents the name of the place where the chapter is located.

12. The chapter may lose its status as a EMPOWER PEOPLE chapter at the discretion of the main EMPOWER PEOPLE chapter. However, the reason for such an action shall be clearly stated and justified.

13. Membership to the chapter shall be open to every Indian, without any discrimination,

14. An annual status report containing the activities and financial status of the chapter shall be prepared by all chapters, including the main chapter, and made available to all other chapters. The recommended deadline for this report is May 1 of each year.

Form an Ad Hoc Committee

Form an ad hoc committee of local people or your friends interested in managing, developing, and improving the development process of India and to work against violence.

The purpose of this ad hoc committee is to:

Communicate with EMPOWER PEOPLE’s National Team and help

Determine the geographical area to be served.

Organize, announce, publicize and conduct an organizational meeting(s) for chapter formation.

Announcement suggestions:

Distribute flyers within companies or organizations of area

Publish notice of organizational meetings on related Blogs.

Do a basic research (need assessment) in covering area of your committee.

Share your report with journalist and key individuals in companies or government organizations.

Create an active network with professional contacts of the Ad Hoc Committee members.

Share your reports with other organizations and clubs.

Rinku Mondal dropped out of school when she was 10, to rolls bidis with her mother. She was trying to help augment her family’s meager income, but after four years of living hand-to-mouth, she decided to leave her village along the Indo-Bangla border, to look for work in Mumbai.

Swapna Majumdar/WFS

“I told her not to go and that we would manage with the money that we were earning,” says Rinku’s mother, Rekha. “I warned her that Mumbai was not a good place and bad things happened to girls there. But she didn’t listen to me.”

A few months later, Rinku returned home with sindoor in her hair, claiming that she was working in a house and had married a man who had helped her get a job. Her family was angry that Rinku had married without informing them, but asked her not to go back to Mumbai. “I pleaded with her not to go but she said she had to earn more money so that we could lead a better life. When she gave me Rs 9,000 [approximately 140 USD], I knew something was wrong,” says Rekha.

Rekha’s worst fears came true when Rinku called her last year saying that she had been caught in a police raid on a brothel. Since then, Rekha has been working a child protection NGO to try to get Rinku released.

9,000 missing children

Rinku is just one of the approximately 9,000 children who’ve gone missing from poor communities along the border with India and Bangladesh. It’s common for young girls to ‘vanish’ or ‘go missing after marriage’ or get ‘lost’ from villages in West Bengal, along the 2,000 kilometre Indo-Bangla border.

“There is a demand for young girls in prostitution,” says Roop Sen of Sanjog, a Kolkata-based resource organization working on anti-trafficking and safeguarding child rights. “Going by the numbers of girls rescued from the red light areas of Mumbai, Pune and Delh, the situation is alarming. In 2009, Rescue Foundation - an NGO in Mumbai - rescued 176 girls from the red light area in Mumbai. The youngest of them were 16.”

Children living along the border between India and Bangladesh are particularly vulnerable to being wooed or snatched from their homes because of poverty, the threat of early marriage, and poor education. Although border agents in the area are tasked with preventing trafficking, locals say the agents spend more time harassing and assaulting locals, in the name of searching for illegal migrants.

The porous Indo-Bangla border makes locals girls more vulnerable

Swapna Majumdar

Hard life along the border

A 2009 survey by the National Commission for Women revealed that the trafficking of women and children for commercial sexual exploitation took place in 378 districts in India. West Bengal, with its porous border regions, emerged as a prime site. A 2010 report from the border district found that widespread food scarcity, gender inequality and poverty makes women and girls easy targets for traffickers.

According to Sanjog researcher, Paramita Banerjee, adolescent girls want a different life than their parents. “It is to escape semi-starvation, multiple pregnancies and domestic violence that they succumb to inducements like income-earning opportunities outside their villages,” she says. They often end up in brothels across India; finding and freeing them is very difficult.

The state has tried to address the problem, but there’s a lack of political will and the various implementing bodies have failed to work together. This is a tragic situation for the health and well-being of communities living near the border, who continue losing their daughters to forces beyond their control. Source

1.Research Studies/surveys
2.Evaluation of the Programmes Implemented by the Government/NGOs
3.Feasibility Studies/Cost Benefit Analyses
4.Monitoring
5.Documentation
6.Capacity Building
7.Training & Orientation
8.Facilitation and Direct Execution of the Development Projects
9.Computerization of Data and its Analysis

EMPOWER PEOPLE has a wide range of experience on the following major development issues.

1.Reproductive and Child Health
2.ICDS: Non-formal Education
3.Adult Education
4.Primary & Higher Education
5.Women Empowerment
6.Development of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes
7.Development of Minorities
8.Empowerment of Disabled Persons
9.Micro-enterprise Development
10.Skill Enhancement
11.SHG Formation and Capacity Building
12.Awareness Generation

Geographic area

Assam
Bihar
Chattisgarh
Delhi
Haryana
Himachal Pradesh
Jharkhand
Madhya Pradesh
Punjab
Rajasthan
Uttaranchal
Uttar Pradesh
West Bengal

These brides were bought for Rs 3,000 Villagers in Haryana Mewat district buy women for a pittance from Assam and other N-E states

Nuh (Haryana): In Nagina, a non-descript village in Haryana about 100 kilometres South of Delhi, you do not need a Javed Akhtar to tell you that women in North-east are being traded. Here, you — notwithstanding your age, physical status or financial condition — can actually buy a woman.

All you need to have is a few thousand rupees in your pocket, the strength to traverse 500 metres through slushy streets to reach Roddar, a middle-aged man with over half a dozen kids and equal number of hens. There is every possibility that Roddar will jump at your demand, be prepared to lead you to Assam and show you number of girls to choose from. He may even introduce you to local people from whom he bought Assamese girls or his own wife Bano (25) for Rs 3,000.

“I can buy him a woman anytime. Come with me to Guwahati. Pay for train tickets, food and girl’s parents. You can pay my fee (Rs 3,000) later,” Roddar rattles off as we introduce an ‘eligible’ youth to him. Like any other good trader, Roddar lines up options for us. “Contract de do Rs 15,000 mein. I’ll take care of every thing. Or pay the girl’s parents directly and pay my charges later,” he proposes.

Ask him the details of intended travel to Guwahati and he opens up. He names a place which is around 30 kilometres from the Assamese capital and is his sasural also. His wife Bano butts in and assures us that her parents will arrange for the girl and act as guarantor. He boasts he has supplied thousands of Assamese girls in his region.

Ask for evidence and he brings forward Ramesh, a local youth in Nagina whom he bought an Assamese girl. Roddar claims he at times even brings group of women from Assam and presents them before prospective buyers at his home.

Roddar is not alone who pimps for women from North-east. In almost every hamlet of 550 village-strong Mewat, the newly-created district in Haryana, you find people who bought women from Assam, West Bengal or Bihar for themselves, developed local contracts there and got headlong into the sordid trade. During our travel through Hathin, Nuh and Firozpur Zirka, three major towns of Mewat district, we came across dozens of such pimps.

In fact, every other person who has fetched a woman from the North-eastern states (called Paros in local parlance), gets offers from families of youth who are not getting married for one reason or the other. “People ask me to arrange match and offer me Rs 10,000 to Rs 20,000. But I cannot do this,” says Illiyas (40), a rickshaw puller on the outskirts of Nagina who bought Sakina (30) after the death of his first wife. Unfortunately for the investigative agencies, the pimps can only be accessed through local contacts they rely on and the slightest of suspicion drives them away.

Roddar slunk away into a bylane the moment a local contact of his grew suspicious of us and alerted him. The pimps take advantage of dowry system and poverty prevalent in the North-eastern region.

Since Haryana is considered prosperous, it makes even easier for them to convince the girl’s parents. Besides, the male-female ratio in Haryana, and particularly Mewat region, is badly skewed against the girl child and this forces the Mewatese men to look east and shun dowry.

Surprisingly, the administration which launched a campaign against the pimps of women trade in 2003, seems to have lost its momentum since. Superintendent of Police (SP) Sukhdev Singh said the police had received no complaints and were told in most cases that the people brought women with the latter’s consent.

Indecent proposal “Contract de do Rs 15,000 mein. I’ll buy you a girl. Or pay the girl’s parents directly and pay my charges later,” proposes Roddar the pimp Flow-chart of the flesh trade

*Male-female ratio in Haryana, especially in Mewat district, is skewed against the girl child and hence problem of finding a bride

* On the other hand, in Assam, poverty and the prevalent dowry system force parents to sell off daughters for a pittance. The image of Haryana as a prosperous state also boosts the sordid trade

* Brides are sold for as low as Rs 3,000. Assam or North-eastern states are not the only suppliers. Bihar and West Bengal too figure on the list

* Police officials in Haryana say they can’t act unless they receive complaints, claim these marriages are mostly consensual

-- Narendra Kaushik

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26 trafficked girls from Jharkhand rescued from Delhi

Assam2Delhi March Against Bride Trafficking : Brief report

"Wife-sharing" haunts Indian villages as girls decline

Phul Kumari, 25, stands with her child in

front of a window in a village community centre

in Baghpat district, located in India's northern state

of Uttar Pradesh October 18, 2011. Kumari

was trafficked to Uttar Pradesh as a bride for

her husband and has been repeatedly

raped by his brothers who could not

find wives

Trafficker from Bengal held, 5 girls rescued

India Facing A Skewed Child Sex Ratio

Setup a Local Chapter

Girls go missing in West Bengal

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Haryana buying brides from other states

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